Role of Free and Fair Elections in Consolidating Democracy in Kenya

Abstract

Electoral Reforms have been considered as a single most democratic variable that has the potency of sustaining Kenya unto the path of national stability, growth, development and stability. The 1997/8 post electoral violence afforded the republic an opportunity to reconsider its governance processes and its weighted opinion on the role elections as a key determinant of national stability cannot be gainsaid. Strategic analysis of the ill-fated hand shake phenomenon in Kenya between President Kenyatta and Raila Odinga retracts any keen observer to the key theme election occupies in Kenya’s national healing and construction. Devoid of its legalistic attribute, the Building Bridges Initiatives breaths to live the true place that elections holds in Kenya’s prosperity and peace in its attempt to redraw the electoral boundaries as they are known, albeit in rather an  illegitimate methodology in practice as it were, since it’s the sole function of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission of Kenya. The entire theme of the document is geared towards ensuring that each vote counts and that the winner takes all “political jurism” be reconsidered to have a rather all-inclusive governance model. How fair and free an election is belongs to the constituency of the   “mythic”. A fair vote could be examined on the basis of who has won and who has lost and to what extent the loser benefits from the process of the election. An election loser ought in all fairness to be facilitated to check on the winner, in terms of being afforded an opportunity to have a legal office which institutionalizes the function of competing for better governance of the country. The leader of official opposition in Kenya has been an office that has awarded fairness to an electoral runners up, as well as ensuring that those who lose an election continue being part and parcel of governance. This paper considers exploring the various variables key for sustaining free and fair elections in Kenya, with the objective of bringing to bare the influence of credible political party nominations in consolidating democracy in Kenya, to determine how voter education enhances democracy in Kenya, to establish how integrity of electoral candidates enhances democracy in Kenya, and finally to describe how fair elections have an influence on democracy in Kenya. The paper shall sample thirty respondents, with party leaders, scholars and informed citizens constituting the sampling frame. Primary and secondary data shall be employed to crystallize the paper.